all the layered out of game influences

first let me start by saying I've been playing this game since it came out. the original system and community was great.

now over the past years there have been several editions of add on changes to affect the behavior of players. some of which i strongly disagree with for numerous reasons. while some if not most of these things might sound like a good idea it in fact hurts everyone more then helps.

the que system: originally there was no accept match button and you would be thrown into a game if one was available. while this seemed annoying at times it also was a fairly even occurrence of issues for both sides. the first issue for this was that people might que and then go afk, the punishment for that back then was eventually a ban if enough reports appeared. so if you didn't afk completely for the whole game and got into champion selection there was the next step of pick/ban. if you didn't ban there was no bans, if you didn't pick you got a random champion. the time you had to do this was a fair chunk but ultimately you'd get a few people at night or mid day that wouldn't show up for picks. now that you were in the game you could now enjoy the champion you didn't pick, this wasn't too bad of an issue unless you were at a decent rank since most people just bum rushed each other or won of first blood snowballing through their lane. the game was pretty different. you could effectively just get an early kill and win since no catch up mechanics existed and without a tower you couldn't get gold against a fairly competent team, which was most people since everyone then would harass you if you didn't fight fairly decent. smaller community, less bad players.

so now the list of effects looks different. you que for a game, que pops, and you get 10-15 seconds to accept it. yeah that's okay but personally i don't like things that don't have settings that can be turned off. if i don't want to accept the que for some reason i don't want this thing flying up on my screen. once you accept the que you are now at risk, i say at risk due to the nature of how the next portion of the game can play out since you now are being expected to do things. so you get a few seconds to show everyone the champion you don't want to play because half the time if you don't do what everyone wants and they see something they don't like you will be flamed. if you don't it doesn't matter. next is banning, recently most people have been more or less neutral with bans since it's fairly balanced in low ranks where everyone is pretending to try hard. if you don't ban it's more or less whatever. After ban phase comes the part that everyone tends to get really touchy over.

actual selection of what you will be playing. now you, as your own person and an individual are being compelled to please other people in this game since your pick can affect the outcome of the game to a degree. once everyone on your team has picked the match will begin however here is the fun part. if you leave now, there is still a chance to ideally save yourself from something you do not want to participate in. there is a recurring increment however, that goes quickly to 30 min. this time is the time you must sit around not playing the game on that account you are currently logged into if you leave. so in the previous steps of selection where you are introduced to other players that you might not agree with or like.

the reasoning for this was due to the nature of abuse, although people wanting to play the game a certain way sounds like a form of recruitment and selection. most people get upset when they get a few ques back to back and have to click a button 5 times just to start a game. usually that's a sign to wait for the guy everyone is avoiding finds himself a party he likes.

if you leave you now lose up to 30 min of your time on that account. i don't know who came up with the idea of adding a time based penalty to arena based games however most people are sane enough to think it is a bad method of handling a social aspect of introductions, if you leave multiple times for a variate of reasons that could occur you have now wasted a full day sitting around not playing the game you wanted to play. the alternative is to level multiple accounts, there are many people who do this. for the people who have 2-10 accounts this is not an issue and they are free to do as they please since the timers are set on actual time and not time waiting in que which, even if it was time in que, you could simply multi-box or run a second computer just for this purpose. so to what extent do you want to punish people on a single account for not wanting to participate with things they don't like.

next we assume the game has started and everyone is happy, if someone leaves early they are punished and the game is voted to close. if people agree it's a bad idea to not play at a loss everything is great. not always the case. so everyone is here and you are ready to start, you miss a few skills or walk to the wrong spot and get flamed. okay well if they know something useful they can say it but lets say someone didn't like that. now you have 2 people to micro manage or just watch the game burn in a trash can with some popcorn. if you want to just watch since it takes a lot of effort to middleman i wouldn't blame you. well there is the next mechanic added.

next we have the delayed surrender, one of a few very questionable circumstantial utilities forcefully imposed on players. so since you cannot leave you must now wait until 15 min eating your popcorn trying to not do terrible since let's face it, 2 people who aren't actually playing the game makes for a hassle any way you look at it with these tightly tuned ratios in-game. so now that we have some popcorn and a movie to ease the damaged pride from our probable loss, we can now wait to find out that these delayed surrenders have a circumstance that it must be a full vote yes. okay well if you are okay with playing a game that takes away your time if you don't want to play with people and takes away your time if you do play with people you can't win. now we are hard stuck in a game for another 5 min. we are now at 20 min and 2 people might or might not be still fighting, if they are then you have to wait longer. so the entire time this is happening you are expected to play the game despite these people not playing as focused goal oriented people. anyone with self respect and pride will be vastly annoyed they are stuck in the game, why should they be, these 2 players aren't doing much and have low scores.

further i would like to point out that there are far easier ways to "grief" a game that aren't taken into account by the report or punishment systems and by forcing people to play in situations that are undesirable consuming their time. those methods can and do get deployed all the time.

some of which include near miss fights. where a player intentionally pulls out of a fight knowing full well their team will lose that fight early on to make the game more one sided to end it faster. another example would be avoiding areas that would otherwise be beneficial to adding map pressure. since in both instances these things cannot be proven and most players assume people are bad it is easy to confuse them with someone having a bad game. although it gets more in depth when you introduce a forced fight with a near miss, this enables you to post blame on someone who can then be targeted by everyone else as the "cause/culprit" of this so called "bad game".

so to collect some point to point things. if you leave the game you get punished, if you play the game you punish yourself, if you play the game and leave mid game your account is punished.

the first and foremost problem is at the start, there is no reason to undisclosed require players to have more then 1 account to be successful in the game.

if you leave in the lobby for any reason then rank goes down, easiest way to easy that problem out of the door. now you don't have people who want to tell each other nasty things and watch a movie trying to get through the game.